Commentary: Life-and-death message on cell phone use for students

By Olga Polites

As summer begins to wind down, most high school seniors will turn their thoughts to a new year filled with Friday night football games, college applications, and for some, driving to school instead of taking the bus. They will begin to feel like real adults, making decisions that will have a profound effect on their futures.

As a veteran teacher, I hope to help them with an increasingly more difficult problem: how they manage their cell phones.

This year I will start by telling them about Robbinsville School Superintendent Steven Mayer. He was killed while jogging in April, allegedly by a high school senior. The driver, now 18, has been charged with death by auto and leaving the scene of a fatal motor-vehicle accident. According to authorities, the woman was on her phone at the time of the accident.

Mayer was 52 years old, a man with a wife and three sons. I cannot imagine the pain and grief his family has been going through - all because a high school senior was allegedly on her cell phone while driving.

As many of my former students can attest, I have been sounding the alarm in my classroom regarding cell phone use for a very long time. While most students will at least try to hide that they are sending a message or checking the latest tweet, it's still terribly disruptive.

I have appealed to their moral conscience: "Checking a cell phone signals that you don't value the teacher or the learning environment."

I have appealed to their intellect: "Being on your phone means you might miss something important in the lesson."

I have shared articles that detail how cell phones have become enormous distractions in daily life, and that it requires discipline to manage their use.

I've even shown them Youtube videos of Adele and Beyonce excoriating their fans for videotaping songs instead of being in the moment and enjoying the music.

With Mayer's death, I will appeal to my students' emotions. I hope they will see themselves in that teen driver. I want them to make a direct connection between what happened on that April morning and what so many of them do every day - get behind the wheel of a car. This won't be easy - after all, they are biologically programmed to believe they are invincible, that something like this couldn't happen to them.

When cell phones became a regular presence in schools, many of us were concerned with cheating - students taking a picture of a test or writing topic and then sharing it with friends. As social platforms have proliferated, however, it has become clear that there are few times in a typical day when teenagers aren't engaged with their phones. With almost half of all U.S. teenagers reporting that they are addicted to their phones, it's time to have a national conversation about their proper use.

Recently, the National Council on Highway Safety began airing public service ads that focus on the dangers of texting and driving. The tag line - stoptextsstopwrecks - should serve as a reminder to all drivers, rookie and veteran, that we have a personal responsibility to do the right thing.

One way is to use the many apps now available, such as AT&T's DriveMode and Verizon's Safely Go, which prevent phone and text messages from coming in or going out while the car is moving. Another suggestion is to place the phone out of reach, in the trunk of the car or a locked glove compartment. One of the most effective methods is parents and other adults modeling good cell phone behavior. Once it becomes a national priority, much like the campaign against drinking and driving, cell phone behaviors will improve dramatically.

When school starts in September, I'll explain my cell phone policy to a new group of seniors. I'll remind them of the school guidelines and the procedure for violations, and I'll repeat my mantra that cell phone discipline in the classroom will transfer to cell phone discipline in the car. I will also show them a picture of Steven Mayer, and share the very tragic way in which he died.

Olga Polites teaches at Cherokee High School and Rowan University. polites@rowan.edu